System Era Softworks

Astroneer

When Astroneer releases in early 2016, it will invite a lot of comparisons to Minecraft. Both are large, open-world survival games where players terraform a vast space to find resources and, eventually, build civilization. But System Era Softworks, the team behind the space exploration game, has a much bigger universe in mind, and if it can deliver on its promise it could leave Minecraft in the blocky, angular dust.

Astroneer’s concept is, of course, very similar to Minecraft. But instead of being a lone wandering character in the wilderness, you’re a lone astronaut on a planet. Here’s where things get bigger: The planet is one of many, and you could also be one of many.

It also comes from a different place: one that’s not about sharp polygons.

System Era Softworks

Astroneer

Like a lot of indy games, the idea began with a core design concept and only a couple of people--in this case just one. “Astroneer came from an art project I was working on in my spare time,” says creator Adam Bromell. “I wanted to tell the story of an astronaut, alone on an infinitely distant planet, where [the astronaut is] the key to human survival but [she] would have to eventually sacrifice [her] life to do be that savior.”

As the idea developed, team members were added. “We were all convinced immediately that building Astroneer is something we had to do,” he says. “It’s a video game we’ve wanted to play for years, and we’re going to be the ones to make it.”

Since the beginning, Bromell has wanted Astroneer to be a game that finds the perfect balance “between simulation and fantasy.” Player creativity is important, he says, so he and the other creators actively took fictional liberties and introduced things like terrain deformation and 3D interfacing.

The idea of walking the line between survival and building isn’t a new one, but interplanetary survival is definitely a new frontier. And terrain manipulation, as it’s seen in the trailer, looks like it will be an entirely new way of building.

The game’s terraforming has a completely different design aesthetic: As a loose metaphor, think airbrush instead of chisel. You’ll be sculpting viscous clay of terrain rather than stacking it.

This also means things are a bit more cartoonish. But Bromell says that doesn’t interfere with the real side of the equation. “We’re fine with the terrain being manipulated in a way that can feel a bit magical or the fact that an Astroneer can easily lift things three times his size so long as it supports the overall fantasy of being an Astronaut exploring and exploiting planets, far away from humanity.”

The other thing you may have noticed? No interface. Bromell says so far, “We have added no flat fullscreen UI interface. No menus or text to read. Everything happens in game and is a direct result of which objects you’re interfacing with. Since we are a third person game, this completely frees you to make quick modifications to the world while still feeling like you’re in the experience.”

System Era Softworks

Astroneer

That may change, but it would be interesting for a play experience to essentially have no onboard or static heads up display. Bromell says that’s a good thing, at least for Astroneer. “Many first-person survival games become locked to a first-tier set of small interactions with the world, creating the dreaded “grind.” But third person allows the camera to zoom out to match the game’s progression.

Initially, an Astroneer must survive with very limited resources, managing small sets of resources such as oxygen and water. But later on, advanced players will be ferrying large cargos in spaceships, while still using the same third-person diegetic interaction scheme. We believe that these intuitive interfaces and forgiving progression schemes will allow a much broader audience to have access to an otherwise complex genre of sandbox games.”

One of the more common questions that gets asked when a new game goes for vintage aesthetics rather than realism, is intent. Bromell says the team “established early on that what we love the most about this low poly, geometric art style was that it easily complements the way we wanted to build the game.”

The Astroneer team, sort of like the guys from Minecraft originally, was sacrificing the potential of high-end graphics to get things done. Textures can take up a lot of time and manpower, and simplifying the aesthetics means more time can be devoted to mechanics. “We can quickly come up with the concept for something, spend an hour or so modeling it out, and get it in the game instantly.”

That hard-facts decision has actually played to their favor. There’s a chance you clicked on this story because the artwork caught your eye. Bromell says that’s been happening a lot, and it’s surprised him. “Something we didn’t anticipate from the art style but we notice more and more as we show more of the game is it really seems to captures the attention of people who may only see Astroneer in their Facebook or Twitter feed.” Bromell says people are drawn in by the near-cartoonish looks. “It’s big shapes and bright colors resonate with a lot of people and we take that into consideration with every new piece of game art that we create.”

When likening Astroneer to comparable titles like Minecraft, Pikmin, or the upcoming No Man’s Sky, Bromell is sure that Astroneer fits the genre. “Exploration and the sandbox nature of the game are intrinsically linked as they are part of a larger game loop. A player must build new equipment to survive on these alien planets and to find the resources to build bigger bases and vehicles they need to venture out further.”

Ultimately, though, Astroneer is built around that idea of endlessly grander adventures and excursions. As developers we are simply constructing the foundation for these mechanics…we’ll be very interested to see the different ways people end up playing the game.”

As for how the game will work, it’s clear that the player will have to resource hunt, terraform, and worry about things like oxygen. But he or she will also have to worry about different planets and their own unique challenges. “[Team member] Jacob has spent a considerable amount of time in ensuring that the technology we have gives each planet its own identity and challenges while also encouraging players to define what problems they’d like to tackle or what goals they’d like to have.”

But the biggest thing the game may draw in players with is cooperative play. “Friends who play together will be able to work together in the same physical space, solving problems together and interacting directly,” says Bromell.

System Era Softworks

Astroneer

That’s not new to survival games, but here’s where it gets interesting: indirect cooperation. “Eventually, players will want to split up and work together while on different sides of a planet or even on different planets. Because the game allows players to seamlessly travel to or send resources to other planets, this creates a wide variety of emergent gameplay scenarios, such as when one player is running low on resources and must rely on [his or her] distant teammate to organize a resupply.”

You’ll just have to hope there’s someone there to help, if you need it.

“Many games offer seamless, traversable planetary systems,” says Bromell. “And many others offer synchronous co-op, but Astroneer marries the two in a way that creates a host of new, compelling shared experiences.”

via stratocat.com

Inflating a Winzen balloon

In 1783, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Ètienne Montgolfier launched a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in the open basket of a hot air balloon over southern France. In 1957, a very different kind of balloon carried US Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger to 100,000 feet on the first Manhigh mission. The difference in balloon technology that made Kittinger’s flight possible came down, largely, to one man: Otto Winzen.

Modern ballooning’s roots can be traced to Swiss-born engineer Jean Felix Piccard. In 1913, he made his first balloon ascent with his twin brother Auguste at the age of twenty-nine. Twenty years later, he led the research team that designed the stratospheric gondola “Century of Progress” that launched as part of the Chicago World’s Fair. Ascending to almost 58,000 feet, the gondola served as a platform from which Piccard could study cosmic rays and test liquid oxygen systems.

In 1936, Piccard was recruited to join the the University of Minnesota’s aeronautical engineering department. A year later, he launched the first plastic film balloons and began experimenting with clusters, which led to the Pleiades project; 92 balloons carried Piccard to 11,000 feet in a metal gondola.

Piccard’s attempt to develop a high-altitude balloon system caught the attention of Otto Winzen. Born in Germany in 1917, Winzen immigrated to the United States in 1937. He earned his degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy, and after spending a fair bit of the Second World War in an internment camp he was hired by the Minnesota Tool and Manufacturing Corporation in Minneapolis in 1945 as the company’s chief engineer.

Wizen was working on developing instruments for Navy dive-bombers when Piccard reached out. The Swiss engineer was working on a stratospheric manned mission for the Navy’s Office of Naval Research and he wanted the German’s help on the project. Originally called Pleiades II, the program was renamed Helios and had the goal of lifting a manned capsule to 100,000 feet using a cluster of cellophane balloons.

Like any technology, cellophane balloons had their limitations, which prompted Wizen and Piccard to start looking for an alternative material. Saran, nylon, and Pliofilm all failed before the pair settled on polyethylene, an ultra-thin and extremely strong material developed in Britain and used to insulate submarines and radar sets during the war. The contract to build this new balloon was ultimately awarded to General Mills. Best know as a purveyor of breakfast cereals, General Mills founded an Aeronautical Research Division coincident with Helios’ inception in 1946 and successfully poached Winzen who became chief engineer.

General Mills

A General Mills balloon billboard

Working at General Mills, Winzen developed polyethylene balloons. The first could hold 30,000 cubic feet of gas, but that was small; his goal was to build one that could hold 200,000 cubic feet. But even with the larger balloon, Helios would need a cluster of 70 to get off the ground. The gondola grew into a 7 foot 2 inch diameter aluminum sphere with walls one-eighth of an inch thick. Made of eight segments, the internal volume of 192 cubic feet could house two men in 88 cubic feet with scientific instruments taking up 52 cubic feet and onboard equipment taking up the remaining 26 cubic feet. It was, in short, too big and too heavy.

Helios never got off the ground. By late 1947, the program had lost enough momentum to be canceled. But the work wasn't in vain. On the strength of the program’s steps forward, the Office of Naval Research opted to continue balloon development for future programs. One called Skyhook was a classified program to use high altitude balloons to detect nuclear bomb tests in distant communist nations. Another called Stratolab was a joint program between the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation to send a manned gondola to more than 75,000 feet for extended observations in the thinner upper atmosphere.

Winzen built the balloons for for Both Skyhook and Stratolab, though not on behalf of General Mills. In 1949, he left the cereal company to found his own, Winzen Research, Inc., with financial help from his wife Vera. He also took on another fruitful collaboration, this time with the US Air Force in the mid-1950s. Winzen was recruited by John Paul Stapp and David Simons to build a balloon and capsule that could carry a man to 100,000 feet and keep him there for a day. This was Project Manhigh, a program designed to test what extended exposure to the near-space environment might do to a human passenger in anticipation of spaceflight.

Winzen’s company did well throughout the 1960s, but he soon moved from Minnesota to Texas and began selling off parts of the company to his employees. Things quickly fell apart from there. Winzen had gone through a divorce and was unhappily remarried, he lost his clout in the field, and eventually fell into a deep depression. In 1976, the inventor of polyethylene balloons committed suicide.

I get into the story of Project Manhigh along with histories of Otto Winzen, John Paul Stapp, and David Simons in my book Breaking the Chains of Gravity, which is coming out in the US on January 12, 2016. You can pre-order it on Amazon!

Sources: General Mills; US Naval History Blog; The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry; Winzen on Stratocat; Piccard at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

Death Star II

Death Stars are expensive. The fictional weapon, which defined evil in the original Star Wars trilogy, is so deadly and so massive that it’s perplexed humans on Earth, who have done everything from calculate its cost ($193 quintillion) to debate the economic impact of its destruction. Surely, absolutely no one is thinking, there must be a cheaper way to build a planet-destroying laser into a space station.

There is. Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Wired he would recommend building it out of materials that are already in space, like asteroids, because launching stuff from Earth can be really expensive.

At Popular Science, we did some rough math to figure out how much of the total $193 quintillion cost of the Death Star was attributable to launches, assuming the costs are similar to those on Earth. The parts for the International Space Station were brought into space on 34 space shuttle flights, each with a cost of $450 million. That’s a total delivery cost of $15.3 billion, out of a total station cost of roughly $100 billion. Assuming space launches account for a similar proportion of the total cost to build a Death Star, then cutting out launch costs could save the Empire $29.5 quintillion.

Freed from the literally astronomical costs of launching into orbit, asteroid mining could be a cheap way to gather material for space structures, from a gargantuan Death Star to a merely gigantic Star Destroyer, or maybe even something that isn’t designed to blow up heavenly bodies.

In the video below, Muirhead discusses NASA’s idea to tug an asteroid into orbit around the moon, but there are other possibilities for would-be space lords. Last month, President Obama signed a law that authorizes asteroid mining. This law theoretically operates under existing space law as defined by the Outer Space Treaty (a totally really thing), and makes way for the potential future of actually mining asteroids.

NASA

Space Station Solar Panel Repair by astronaut Scott Parazynski, M.D.

Astronaut Scott Parazynski, M.D. performed a risky 7-hour-long spacewalk to repair a damaged solar panel on the space station back in 2007.

In the new Science Channel show, “Secret Space Escapes,” astronaut Scott Parazynski, M.D., recounts one of the most challenging days of his life: a live, fully energized solar panel needed to be repaired in space, and he risked his life on a 90-foot arm to fix it.

The fully energized panel could have given Parazynski life-threatening electrical shocks out-of-reach of any hospital on Earth. For some, that level of risk would have been a segue to retirement. Not for Parazynski. “Best day on the job ever,” he told me recently, during a phone interview. I could hear him smiling.

Parazynski just seems to be wired differently than many of us. His pursuit of extreme environments seems to know no bounds. In addition to being an astronaut (who has completed five space shuttle missions, seven space walks and spent 57 days in space), Parazynski is also a medical doctor, scuba diver, pilot, speaker and mountain climber—he’s the only astronaut to summit Mount Everest.

He gives his parents and some key life events credit for his adventurous spirit. “It’s hardwired in my blood,” he says.

Growing up, he traveled to Senegal, Lebanon, Iran, Greece and other places before attending Stanford University and Stanford Medical School. His father was a part of NASA’s Apollo program, which explained the travels, and inspired Parazynski’s own interest in testing boundaries. “I grew up in the shadow of the program that took men to the moon in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. So I had a taste of humanity’s greatest achievement,” he says.

As a kid, he read books about Lewis and Clark, Himalayan expeditions and Jacques Cousteau, which fueled the wanderlust that shaped his medical career: he flew in the STS-95 space shuttle mission in 1998 as astronaut John Glenn’s personal physician, and served as University of Texas Medical Branch’s chief medical officer for the Center for Polar Medical Operations in the Antarctic, screening scientists before their trip and provided them real time medical care using telemedicine from the U.S. (He’s also visited Antarctica twice).

“As I’ve grown older I’m also convinced of the great value of pursuing human performance at extreme, challenging environments. In fact, I think it’s a great catalyst for innovation in health care and other areas,” he says. Parazynski says that by supporting astronauts in the International Space Station as well as crew members at the South Pole, we can learn a great deal about technologies that could be useful closer to home.

When the explorer was growing up, he dreamed of being the first person to set foot on Mars. “I was fortunate enough to be alive when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon and I thought it would be really cool to be the Martian equivalent of Neil,” he says. Today, he’s accepted that that likely won’t be the case. But his interest in exploring—and finding life on—other planets has never waned.

“I do believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe, in fact I would imagine there’s quite a bit of intelligent life on distant shores,” he says. He suspects that Mars, Europa, Enceladus and Triton could, in fact, harbor life because they have water and a source of heat.

“In Europa, there’s a very thick, icy crust and then huge water oceans also energized by volcanic activity. Why not send a spacecraft that can bore down through the ice and penetrate the water ocean to see if there’s life existing today?” he asks. “I think that’d be an incredible mission for NASA to take on.”

Scott Parazynski/Twitter

Astronaut Scott Parazynski MD shows off his invention

Retired astronaut Scott Parazynski MD shows off his invention, an anti-freezing innovation, in a September 2015 tweet.

When talking about his own experiences in space, Parazynski waxes poetic—particularly when he reflects on viewing the earth from afar.

“Your eyes can see beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and see literally trillions of sources of light in the distance. But your eyes are always drawn back to planet Earth,” he says. “It’s this beautiful blue orb, and you recognize that everyone that you know and love and everything in human history and human future, for the foreseeable future, is down there on planet Earth. And you just feel very, very fortunate,” he says.

In time, he hopes that with companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX, more people will have the privilege of viewing the Earth from a new perspective. That, he suggests, could give men and women a new resolve to be kinder to the earth, and to one another.

“Think about taking the leaders of Palestine and Israel into space together to see their real estate. Think about the industrial enterprises that are polluting our environment today, to get them up to that vantage point and see what’s happening to our planet,” he says. “I think there might be some profound changes.”

To learn more about Scott Parazynski, tune into Katie Linendoll’s interview with him on www.Katie.show. You can follow Katie on Twitter @katielinendoll.

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

Sky Deck Concept

Airliners are designed as if people are afraid of the sky. The tiny windows, never matched perfectly to the seats, are easy to obscure, and the insides evoke all the comfort and mundanity of a commuter train or, on really nice planes, a bland but expensive lounge bar. This is a shame, because passengers struggling through a pre-selected movie while waiting for their half-size sodas or miniature cocktails are missing out on a truly amazing experience: hurtling through the sky in a flying machine, the kind that’s only existed for little more than a century. So why not design a plane that sees the sky as a joy to experience, rather than an inconvenience to hide?

This concept, unveiled by Windspeed Technologies last month, imagines an airliner with a viewing deck. The craft, arrayed more like a luxury vehicle than a crowded economy flier, includes a lounge setup in the back with a special pair of seats on a piston. Passengers could get in these seats and then ride up to a special bubble/dome viewing canopy, where they can look out at the sky in almost all directions.

Airliner windows were originally designed to be much larger, but a pair of accidents with early Comet jets revealed the structural risk of big windows in the body of the plane. So making all the windows big isn't a great idea, but a specially engineered dome (as strong as the windows in the cockpit) could probably work without jeopardizing the safety of the plane. The concept videos include both a tube-elevator design, as well as one featuring a staircase up to the dome.

But it’s the dome itself, and not the way up to it, that’s exciting. The sky, a pure open gorgeous canvas of sky, available for anyone on the plane. At the very least, it’d be a world better than an in-flight screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks squeakquel.

Until these planes become reality, expect to see me hogging every window seat I get.

[Via DesignBoom]

ASSOCIATED PRESS/Francois Mori

Elon Musk speaks ahead of COP 21 Paris Climate Talks

The SpaceX and Tesla founder gave a talk ahead of the climate conference in 2015.

In the last few years, the world of artificial intelligence has mainly been dominated by large internet companies with huge computing infrastructures like Google and Facebook, or research universities like MIT or Stanford.

Now, there’s another player in town: OpenAI. The non-profit research firm is backed by heavy hitters like co-chairs Elon Musk (of SpaceX and Tesla fame), Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, as well as investor Peter Thiel (who worked with Musk at PayPal). They claim to have garnered a billion dollars in private funding, from people like Thiel and Amazon Web Services.

“We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as is possible safely,” OpenAI writes in its first blog post, published just a few moments ago.

The goal? Make the scope of A.I less narrow. Right now, machines are either good at identifying people, or answering questions, but not both. But the ultimate goal in A.I research is to “generalize” intelligence—have an algorithm that can do it all.

In pursuit of that, OpenAI's founding team hired Ilya Sutskever as research director. Sutskever is currently a research scientist at Google who has worked with some of the most well-known names in A.I. and machine learning, like Geoff Hinton and Andrew Ng (who work with Google and Baidu respectively).

The organization is a non-profit, and only hopes to spend a small fraction of their billion dollar seed in the next few years. They hope to “freely collaborate” with other institutions, which makes sense, as nearly everyone on their research team comes from a prestigious institution like Google, Stanford, and New York University.

Musk's involvement in particular is noteworthy, given the SpaceX founder has previously expressed fears that artificial intelligence could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. OpenAI would appear to be in part an effort to power-check the development of A.I. going forward.

Developing...

After a successful launch in the wee hours of the morning, three astronauts are on their way to the space station. NASA's coverage of the docking process will begin around 11:45 a.m. Eastern, and you can watch it here.

The crew includes Tim Kopra from NASA, Tim Peake from the European Space Agency, and Yuri Malenchenko from Russia's space agency. Peake is the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station.

The three launched from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz capsule at 6:03 a.m. At about 2:25 p.m., the Soyuz's hatch will open and the newest residents of the ISS will come aboard. They'll join astronauts Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko, and Sergey Volkov.

The crew will spend the next few months doing scientific experiments in microgravity. In March 2016, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth after having spent an entire year in space.

Source: 10.1186/s12934-015-0370-x

Bringing Probiotics To Developing Countries Can Improve Food Safety

Over the last few decades, the interest in probiotic bacteria has risen dramatically, particularly in developed countries. These living bacterial strains when taken in the right amount, offer a health benefit to whomever may take them. Back then, the concept of probiotics was rather controversial as studies on their benefits were few and far between. But over the years, thousands of articles including laboratory studies, clinical trials, systematic and Cochrane reviews have provided the scientific base needed to back up these statements.

While probiotics are plentiful in many high-income countries like the United States, they are in rather short supply in many developing countries. This lack of beneficial bacteria may not appear to be a significant public health problem. But the actual benefit of having these bacteria extends much farther than a single health benefit.

Last week, the World Health Organization released a document highlighting the impact of foodborne illness worldwide. Not surprisingly, developing countries were hardest hit particularly in children under five years of age. The lack of a safe food supply combined with a young immune system and malnutrition (which is common in many of these regions) makes for a rather unwelcome outcome for any child.

Most of the causes of foodborne illness are associated with spoilage. Uncontrolled microbial growth can deplete nutrients, increase the concentration of toxins and reduce the availability of safe-to-eat foods. In the United States, this isn’t really considered a problem; you just throw it out. But in regions where food is sacred, even a spoiled product may be needed.

This is where probiotics can help. Most bacteria with probiotic potential are also found in fermentation. This process of controlled spoilage is recognized as a safe means to help preserve food safety and nutrition. A fermented food product usually has a longer shelf life, increased nutrient value, and most importantly, offers no threat to the person upon consumption. It’s a practice used in many households and also in larger manufacturing environments.

However, in some areas of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, fermentation probiotics are either rare or simply not available to the general public. Although some may use local strains to produce small batches, in the larger context of population health, there are few options. Although the concept of bringing large-scale fermentation options to these regions has been discussed for years, viable options have been elusive.

Now that may change. Last week, an international team of researchers unveiled their solution to the problem. They developed a stable mixture of probiotic bacteria to ferment a variety of different foods. Best of all, it is inexpensive meaning almost anyone will be able to take advantage of the benefit. The team worked with two specific and very well-studied species of bacteria, Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Streptococcus thermophilus. They initially examined the metabolism of specific strains and eventually came up with two that worked well together. With the strains in hand, they went to work to find the best and most cost-effective means to deliver live cultures.

The answer was a dried seed culture. First, the bacteria were grown in large batches in the hopes of attaining a concentration of 5 to 10 billion bacteria per gram dried weight. Then, they were put to the test to ensure they could survive and still be effective. This included acid measurements in culture (fermentation results in an increase in acid), immunological staining to ensure the bacteria were indeed there, and genetic screening.

Once they had determined the seed culture was the right option, they tried to make a variety of fermented foods. Much to their delight, the bacteria worked perfectly. The end products were formed and had many of the expected aesthetic properties in terms of viscosity, taste, and the always important mouthfeel. Most importantly, they were safe. In all of the samples made, the levels of pathogens were either lower than the needed concentration to cause infection or were simply not detected.

While the results are a success scientifically, for the authors, the public health value has surpassed the academic achievement. To date, 46 dairy cooperatives and farmers are using the seed cultures and up to 25,000 people have been serviced with safe, fermented foods. In the coming years, the authors hope to expand this and eventually test for health benefits other than a reduction in foodborne illness.

OC Robotics

LaserPipe

What if it was possible to weld pipes from the inside? While not necessary for all welding, sometimes there are metal tubes that need repair, and no good way to get to them other than going inside. For tubes that are too small for humans, repairing them means extensive work getting to them from the outside. What if, instead, we could send robots down the tubes, and have them weld with laser?

This snake robot, made by OC Robotics in collaboration with TWI Ltd, was built to see whether such a machine could work. Plenty of snakebots already exist, doing everyything from rescue work to surgery to industrial machining, but tragically few of them use lasers. From OC Robotics:

Modern industrial sites require regular maintenance to replace or repair deteriorated pipes. A result of the challenging environment, confined space and limited external access is that external orbital cutting and welding processes are not viable for many applications and, consequently, in-bore remote processing has generated significant interest in recent years.

The LaserPipe project goal was to develop a compact in-bore laser welding system and investigate the procedures for an all positional laser welding process. The resulting laser welding head was integrated with a snake-arm robot, to demonstrate remote locating of weld joint, alignment of laser, and in-bore laser welding. This concept could also be suitable for in-bore laser cutting.

Here it is using the laser:

Seems to be a success! Watch the LaserPipe snake robot in action below:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)

Artist's illustration of the star formerly known as PSR 1257+12, now named Lich

While many in America were looking to the 2016 elections and marveling at the clown-like antics of Donald Trump, another election was taking place in the science world. The International Astronomical Union was tallying the first public votes on what to name a select group of exoplanets, and now the votes are in.

The new names come from all over the world, and each star system has its own theme.

The star formerly known as 55 Cancri, for example, is now known as Copernicus, and its planets are named after Galileo, Jules Janssen, and a variety of other astronomers. That system's new names pretty conventional, but hey, they're better than 55 Cancri b, c, d, e, and f.

Others, such as the planet newly named Dagon, have a more interesting backstory. Dagon is an ancient Syrian fish god--it's an appropriate name for this world, since it orbits a star named alpha Piscis Austrini.

You can read through the rest of the new names here.

In total, 14 stars and 31 exoplanets got renamed. Our fave is the Lich star system (formerly known as PSR 1257+12). Orbited by the planets Poltergeist, Draugr (an undead creature from Norse mythology), and Phobetor (the personification of nightmares), this is one solar system we do not want to move to.

Unlike other organizations that claim you can pay money to name a star or planet, these names are recognized by the scientific community.

Force Block

Star Wars Episode 7 Spoilers

Force Block allows you to keep spoilers out of your internet-browsing experience

Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens spoilers are littering the web as the movie premieres this Friday. While previously only those who hunted for them could scratch their Star Wars spoiler itch, now it seems every day there’s a new trailer or commercial. Enter the Force Block extension.

Force Block for Chrome warns you of sites that may contain Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens coverage—including, but not limited to, spoilers. Tech sites, movie sites and more that have covered Star Wars Episode 7 in the past will be prime suspects on this list—including our site. According to the extension page, Force Block detects spoilers using "smart pattern detection and a whitelist for false alarms."

Force Block

Force Block Chrome Extension

The Force Block Chrome extension blocks and and all pages with possible Star Wars 7 spoilers

Along with preventing you from seeing spoilers, the extension will provide a quote from one of the six movies in the colors and fonts fans know and love. Beneath the quote, users are offered the ability to continue on anyway or to never block the page. Feel free to hit the latter button on your favorite site, PopSci.com.

Other options like Spoiler Shield or FB Purity are available for non-Chrome platforms, but only protect you from spoilers in your social feed. It remains to be seen when Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens viewers can cover up spoilers across all browsers using Force Block. For now, Chrome coupled with this extension is the slickest way to block spoilers for Star Wars fans. If you’re a Firefox or Safari user, you’re better off just staying away from the internet altogether.

Star Wars Episode 7 hits theaters on Friday, December 18. Stay tuned as we bring you more coverage and reviews.

Reuters

Elon Musk

Today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the hottest lecture was a forum with Elon Musk, inventor and potential supervillain. Excitement was high, and the line to get in was absolutely massive.

Luckily, Popular Science reporters are excellent at waiting in line, and with much patience got into the highly anticipated forum.

Musk knew his audience, sprinkling his answers to interview questions with statements like “I am super into science”, advocating the wildly controversial opinion that increased science funding is actually a good idea, and saying that "I do think geoscience is very important."

But really, what else are you going to tell a conference of over 23,000 geoscientists? With the next launch of his Falcon 9 rocket approaching this weekend and the spectacular explosion of the last rocket in June still fresh in everyone's mind, he let us all know how he was feeling.

"Losing the rocket was actually quite hard. It was quite emotionally traumatic actually. It was on my birthday, you know.” The latter statement garnered him a chorus of 'awws' from the audience.

Presumably because of that last failure, we're guessing that all Musk wants for Christmas is a change in the physical properties of the Earth, namely gravity, which is just not cooperating with his rocket plans.

"It's crazy how much gravity affects things," Musk said, soon after noting that "rockets are hard."

But Musk is still looking towards the future, and thinks that eventually colonizing Mars is humanity's best shot at long-term survival. Musk said; "It will be super hard to do this and it will take a long time. I don’t expect to live to see it but I think if we aim for that objective we (our species) will be ok."

The universe is the answer.

He also said that he thought that any life on Mars is likely far below the surface, where it might be shielded from radiation. So in his opinion, he doesn't think that anything that humans do on the surface will affect those tiny Martians. That's likely disheartening to all the scientists who meticulously built the Mars rovers at great expense in immaculate clean rooms, for the express purpose of preventing contamination of Mars with Earthly life forms.

And finally, he revealed one of the books that inspired him to reach for the stars: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

“I used to worry about the meaning of life a lot when I was a teenager, until I read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and it basically said that the universe was the answer." Musk said. " I think it helps provide meaning in life.”

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Additional reporting by Shannon Stirone

Armel Gibson

OASES

At 26, Armel Gibson, a French game designer, is the co-founder of Klondike, a gaming collective, and has produced more than a dozen games with vintage looks, tight controls, and challenging levels. But the game he’s getting the most attention for right now has no levels, missions, quests, or objectives. There’s no way to lose. And that’s how he wanted it.

Oases is a beautifully designed flight game where, contrary to the entire genre, you never crash, land, encounter obstacles, or have a destination. And it’s all in tribute to the pilot-grandfather he never knew.

“My grandfather died in 1960,” explains Gibson, “during the Algerian Independence War when his plane was reported lost in the desert, days before the birth of his first child, my father.”

Since Gibson wouldn’t be born for years to come, the game build wasn’t really a coping mechanism. “I never met my grandfather,” he says. “Even my father didn't get to meet him. His death is something we almost never talk about, not because it's taboo, but because [its] something that happened out of our own lives. So it was definitely more of a remembering mechanism than a coping one.”

Armel Gibson

OASES

Oases is available for download for Mac and Windows right now. Gibson asks you to name your own price.

Gibson says he brought up the idea with his partner, also a French game designer who goes by Dziff, when they were asked to design a game for the “Now Play This” event in London. Though it’s gotten some publicity, he says he still hasn’t shown the game to his family. “I didn't show the game to anyone in my family yet. I plan to do it soon, and I'm equally anxious and curious about their reaction. They don't always get the whole "games as a medium" thing as much as "games as an industry" so we'll see how it goes.”

Games as a medium are increasingly looked upon with favor, but indy games, like Oases, in particular, show off the creators’ ability to rework the concept of a game to evoke a message or feeling.

Armel Gibson

OASES

In this case, Gibson created a game that is free of a lot of the structural traditions of games. There aren’t levels. Or lives. In a fitting tribute, he’s honored the mystery of his grandfather’s disappearance. You don’t get an ending.

That’s unique, especially in an industry increasingly concerned with realism, action, and adrenaline. If a video game is a sports field or battlefield, what Gibson has done is create an anti-field. It’s not the locker room, or even the parking lot. It’s a park: the kind of place you can wander, observe, or relax for a few hours before heading back to reality.

“I wanted to create a space for self-reflection,” he explains. “The game is slow, you can't die or fail, and you can't do much more than [fly] around.” While that might confuse a lot of gamers, it’s remarkably enjoyable. With such an aesthetically pleasing, visually stimulating game, he really didn’t need the rest. “Removing goals, danger, stress, and traditional game mechanics frees a lot of your brain and you can just zone out.”

Where your mind goes isn’t his concern either. For Gibson this game is very much about his grandfather, but for others, he wants the game to be a place for whatever reflection that player needs.

“That you think about what happened to my grandfather or something else while playing I don't care much about to be honest,” says Gibson. “I just want people to chill, listen to the music and enjoy something nice and peaceful for a few minutes.”

Albert Ter Harmsel/FlickrCC by 2.0

Dry Ground

It’s getting hot in here. In a poster presented at this week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union, researchers from Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory found that over the next 45 years, intense heat conditions could become not only stronger, but also more frequent, eventually exposing 250 million people to potentially dangerous heat conditions, like the ones that struck Iran and Pakistan earlier this year.

As global temperatures rise, humidity is also expected to rise, with warm air able to hold more moisture. This can lead to extremely hot and humid days in the summer. The authors predict that by the 2060s, 250 million people will be exposed to wet bulb temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and 750 million will be exposed to wet bulb temperatures of 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

That might not seem so hot, especially to people who live in areas where temperatures regularly rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. But as ever, it’s not the heat, its the humidity, and wet bulb temperature is very different from regular temperature.

Wet bulb temperatures are a measure of heat stress, taking into account not only the temperature, but also the moisture in the air. It is similar to a heat index. Both wet bulb temperature and heat index take humidity into account, with heat index adjusting the temperature to define what the temperature outside actually feels like. Wet bulb temperature, on the other hand, is the lowest temperature that can be reached by completely saturating the air with water (getting to 100 percent humidity).

To break that down even further, if a standard temperature reading is 96 degrees Fahrenheit, and the relative humidity is 89 percent, then it will feel like 150 degrees Fahrenheit. The wet bulb temperature for those conditions will be 93 degrees Fahrenheit or 33.9 degrees Celsius.

A high wet bulb temperature means that conditions are incredibly hot and muggy, which is bad news for people. Research has shown that at a wet bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius or more, humans can’t cool themselves off. In those conditions, the air can’t hold any more water, so sweat doesn’t evaporate, and the temperature is high enough that people will start to overheat, leading to heat illness which includes heatstroke, exhaustion, cramps, or rashes. Heat can also be deadly. The heat wave that hit Pakistan this summer killed over 1,300 people.

India, the Middle East, and countries in West Africa will be hardest hit, but countries all around the world will be affected.

To put these dire predictions of the future in perspective, the researchers looked at the past. They took the average of the maximum temperatures of the years between 1985 and 2005 to get the mean annual maximum temperature. They predict that by the 2060s, New York City, already notorious for its sticky, grimy summers, can expect to see 10-20 days a year that will be hotter than the hottest days of 1985-2005. Not only that, but the city will exceed the maximum wet bulb temperature from that same time period for 30-40 days a year.

Areas of South America, Africa, and the Middle East will see over 100 days of each extreme per year.

Such extreme weather conditions could lead to dramatic changes in how society operates in order to cope with the new normal. Physical activity during the daytime on those days could be deadly, so agricultural or construction jobs might have to shift to cooler parts of the day, such as the evening. And electrical demands during the summer could increase even more, as air conditioning becomes not just a luxury, but a tool of survival.

The study authors agree with other recent research that suggests that some areas of the world could become uninhabitable because of heat in the next century.

Hayden/FlickrCC by 2.0

Deforestation

Charred stumps from deforestation in Indonesia in 2007.

In case you missed it, El Niño is coming. And while the current outlook in the United States is pretty mild, other parts of the world aren't so lucky.

Jim Randerson, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, looked at satellite data showing burn areas from the past 18 years. He and his team found that in El Nino years, the size and number of fires in tropical forests increases dramatically. The reason? While some areas get more rainfall during an El Niño event (California is crossing its fingers) other areas, including some rainforests actually see less precipitation during their wet season, giving fires an opening.

"The change in atmospheric dynamics shifts the rainfall," Randerson said. "So El Niño causes less rain to fall in many areas of the tropics, making forests more vulnerable to human-ignited fires."

Randerson's team predicts that in 2016 there will be a very high fire risk in Southeast Asia, Central America, and the southern Amazon.

Fires in tropical forests are already a huge problem. The record-setting fires burning in Indonesia this fall created so much smoke that it created a public health problem. In addition to pollution form burning wood, fires in tropical forests are another problem. Tropical forests are huge repositories for carbon, which is taken in by plants as they grow. Fires release this carbon into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide—the very thing that new legislation, and the recent climate agreement in Paris, are hoping to regulate from a human perspective.

Fires in the tropics are often set by people in an effort to clear land for agricultural purposes. Individual countries are trying to regulate the practice, but it remains a burning problem across much of the world.

To see how widespread fires are, check out this animation which compiles the last 15 years of major fires around the world.

Rinspeed

Etos Concept Art

Driving is a chore. Sure, there are stretches of roads that are pleasant, and there are cars so slick that piloting them feels both graceful and powerful, but most of the time, commuting in traffic and controlling a machine is a tedious task. Etos, a concept car from Swiss automaker Rinspeed, wants drivers to enjoy the experience of travel again. To that end, their car has a landing pad for a drone on the back, so drivers can fly around while they’re on the road.

How can anyone pilot a drone while driving? As envisioned, the car can switch into a self-driving mode, so the driver can instead enjoy the experience hands free. Press a button and the steering wheel slides away.

The driver’s hands are now free to pilot a drone, fiddle with the screens, watch TV, or even read a book. Where a glove compartment would normally be, there's an actual dang bookshelf built into the car, for the driver to use, while driving. The car in essence transforms from a comfortable cockpit to a mobile study.

Etos is undeniably a vehicle that wants to turn traveling by road into as luxurious an experience as possible. Neat, but not much use to those of us in steerage.

Watch a video about it below:

David Breashears/GlacierWorks

Langtang Valley

A devastating landslide caused by an earthquake wiped out an entire village in Nepal's Langtang Valley.

The huge earthquake that struck Nepal in April devastated the capital city of Kathmandu, and many villages in the countryside. Ice avalanches on Everest and landslides in other areas of Nepal caused even more damage than the initial shaking, wiping out entire villages. But because much of the country's communication and transportation infrastructure was damaged in the quake, it's been hard to get a full picture of the damage.

Now, researchers are getting a better idea of what happened. In two studies published in Science today and announced at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, researchers examined the aftermath of this latest massive earthquake, and unveiled new findings about past earthquakes in the region that could help prepare for greater hazards in the future.

In the first paper researchers found that there were 4,312 landslides caused by the earthquakes and aftershocks. All the landslides were mapped by volunteers in the six weeks using field work and satellite data after the earthquake. Some of these events were incredibly deadly, like the one in Langtang Valley (pictured above). Co-author of the paper Jeffrey Kargel estimated that the energy involved in the landslide was roughly half that involved in the nuclear bomb detonation at Hiroshima, and the mass of debris rumbling downslope pushed the air at such a high velocity that the air itself blew away stones in buildings up to a kilometer (half a mile) away.

As horrific as that is, the number of landslides was actually surprisingly small for an earthquake of that magnitude.

In the second paper, researchers looked at the geological evidence for past earthquakes in the Himalaya region. In particular they looked at the massive deposits that were created by landslides during the Medieval period. Pokhara, the second-largest city in Nepal, is actually built on top of sediments that were deposited during landslides following these huge earthquakes. The researchers found that in some cases, the landslide debris had travelled for over 60 km (37 miles) until it got to its final resting place, covering the entire area in massive amounts of sediment and wiping out everything in its path.

In a press conference, one of the authors, Oliver Korup noted that, for perspective, "Downtown San Francisco would be buried by 50 meters (164 feet) of debris".

The April earthquake was certainly devastating to large areas of Nepal, but if it had been larger, more like the ones that happened hundreds of years ago, it could have been even worse. Researchers from around the world are still parsing the data, looking into the past in the hopes that we can better prepare for the future.

Mac Mave Studios

BB-8

We've already shared our spoiler-free impressions of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but without revealing any plot details, the film's biggest twist came during the title credits. Voicing BB-8, the latest, lovable droid in the George Lucas franchise, are Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz, who each received the title 'vocal consultant'.

Hader is well-known for his impressions, comedic stylings on Saturday Night Live, and his work on Trainwreck and The Skeleton Twins, while Schwartz is a renowned comedy writer whose role as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein in Parks and Rec is regarded as one of the show's highlights. How, then, did this random, impromptu, and utterly brilliant partnership come together?

Ben Schwartz's Instagram account

Ben Schwartz and BB-8

According to Drew McWeeny of HitFlix, who spoke with Hader, it wasn't as random as one might think:

"JJ f**king around with this sound effects app on his iPad was attached to a talk box operated by me. It looked ridiculous but it made BB-8's voice. At first I tried doing a voice, but we all agreed it sounded too human."

We've reached out to Schwartz to clarify how the two collaborated on a single droid's voice, and to get his version of events (and how he thought his vocal chops translated on screen). Here's hoping this starts what could be a very fruitful (and sidesplitting) continued role for the comedic duo.